Christiansen's Comments for Hinds county Gazette 09/30/2010

Good Morning! Good Morning!

 I will not be keeping you long today for sure, my kitchen is tore up!…I do not know what is the matter with me, I am calling myself cleaning, but I have made biggest mess out there.

I have visitors coming mid October, my only living aunt, daddy’s baby sister, and a cousin are coming from Colorado for a few days. My Auntie, , is the only somebody I would go to this much trouble for. Her generation’s standard for a clean house is much higher then mine are today. There was a time I kept a much cleaner house then I do now….Waxed floors on my hands and knees, washed windows at least once a week….Oh! and my oven I was especially proud of it, it was soooooooooo clean, it sparkled…the trick to a sparkling oven is after it is cleaned with the oven cleaner…you mix vinegar in water , dip a clean rag in the vinegar water…wring it out, and wipe out the entire oven….it sparkles!



My oven on this stove has never been cleaned….when something spills in the oven I pour salt on it to keep it from smoking and move on. When the oven cools down, I do sweep the salt out. I am in the process of cleaning the cupboards now….then I am going to clean the stove and oven. My cupboards have not been cleaned in years…and I am not trying to get them super clean….just hoping to get the grime back to 2008 levels. The stove, I am going to take a crack at “sparkle”…but will settle for a look that says, “This stove is just about to need a good cleaning.”



This Friday, October 1 , is the start of Raymond’s fall pilgrimage, it begins with a stroll through the historic Raymond Cemetery at 6:30. Actors, local citizens, play parts of people who are buried there. This is a engaging and informative event. But let me say this…I know there are some of you folks, who are not history enthusiasts….but you do not have to be a history scholar to enjoy the stroll. It is like a very entertaining play, but when an act comes to a close…. a curtain does not come down….. the audience moves….Great fun!!!!



Go a bit early and look around the Raymond Military Park….just off of highway 18... loads of fun for kids there are cannons and a scenic walking trail….

You all, Come on out to rural Hinds county…Not only do we have the Military Park…over here near Edwards, off of Highway 467, the old Coker House, it served as a hospital during the Civil war., has been restored ….it shares an entrance with Cal-Maine. We have places to eat in all our little communities…..

                                                           Coker house before Restoration


Need more info about the pilgrimage and it‘s many events…some events are free and some do have a fee…go to http://www.friendsofraymond.org/

Love to all

call if you need me

PDA s And other Ramblings

Christiansen's Comments
Published in the
Hinds county Gazette
Raymond Mississippi
September 23 2010

Mankind has been through some extraordinary revolutions, what with the, automobile, TV, rockets, crushable beer cans and plastic shopping bags…..But, I am thinking the cell phone have to rank fairly high on the graph of life changing gadgets.




Actually they are not called cell phones anymore, they are PDAs, Personal Data Assistant….a title appropriate to it’s endless talents. With the aid of an appliances… about the size of a deck of cards you can access information from anywhere in the world….dictionaries, Bibles of numerous translations, games…..land records, death records, you can visit art museums, traffic can be monitored in real time. PDAs are equipped with cameras, still and video, GPS, stop watches and even a level…..it can do just about anything…except cook …Though, I would not be surprised , if the PDA could be programmed to remotely turn on your oven….



It has been my observation that in any group of people, say for instance in waiting rooms, in restaurants, etc at least half of the people will be on their PDA, talking, texting, or surfing the web ….the younger the group the higher the percentage.



But, what I think surprises me the most is the number of men using cell phones….Once upon a time I believed men did not enjoy talking on phones. My dad, of course, talked on the phone, but until he retired, seldom answered a ringing phone….….if he answered, you knew he was home alone. My John when the phone rang….on the first ring, would begin hollering, “Is somebody going to answer that phone?”



But John took to the cell phone right away…he went and got us each a phone. But for the longest he would not turn his phone on, unless he wanted to call someone….He said, he didn’t want to run his battery down.



I have noticed in the vehicles I meet, at least 2/3 of the drivers are on their phones…just as many men as women….young and old.

I have come to believe…men just didn’t like being tethered by a cord…while women did not mind being constrained by the wire…gave us an excuse to sit down a few minutes.





PDAs have changed how we communicate in such a short time…I get very little personal mail in my mail box at the road anymore…I could not even tell you, the last time I wrote a note, stamped and put it in the mail. Email…. that was the way to go.



But then,….this is what has come about in just the last few months….I am getting and sending less and less email ….But getting and sending more and more text messages. I use test messaging a lot…it is very convenient…it takes very little time. With the smart phones our world is getting bigger and bigger…we are free!…we can go where ever we want and still be in touch with scores of our friends. You can go for days and not speak to even your best friends…and still know what they are up to….by means of Text messaging and the likes of Twitter and Facebook.



Of course there is a pretty hefty cost for the convenience…The high price of the PDA is only the beginning of the cost….To use your PDA you pay by the minute or subscribe to a packages.



In my parents lifetime it was transportation that moved at mind blurring, head scratching speed …leaping from horse and buggy…. to rockets, taking men to the moon.



My lifetime it is communication and information that gushed ahead …When I was a little girl, we had no TV in rural Nebraska until I was 12, and not everybody had phones, and phones were not like they are now, you had to go through what we called “central” gave the number to an operator, who was sitting in front of a big apparatus equipped with plugs and switches…some how, with the aid of the plugs and switches she miraculously was able to patch us through to our intended party.



When I was a little girl… mother often spent the afternoons visiting friends, the elderly, or shut ins…..I spent many hours sitting on a chairs, my hands folded in my lap, and only speaking if spoke to…..It was not a bad experience…I enjoyed listening to the conversations.



So this is what I have been pondering of late,… is money the only cost we are pay for our…for our …..new convenient forms of communicating?

Love to all…. call if you need me

PS Have you noticed ….you don’t hear as much booming music coming from the car next to you at the traffic light…..it must not be possible to talk on the phone and listen to a relentless, pavement shaking…. Boom! Boom! Boom!

Christiansen's Comments Hinds County Gazette September 16 2010

Folks have been asking me where I have been…well, I will tell you, but you may be sorry you asked, you know how I can ramble, get started and not know how to get stopped. But here goes…..


I do not scare easy… But I have come to believe I scare less easily then some, because I do not watch the news and see all of the evil that goes on…. in and around mid Mississippi. I do not imagine there is somebody hiding behind every bush, ready to pounce, intending to do me bodily harm….

But I did have two things that frighten the fire out of me.

Number 1. Driving on the interstate with all of those inconsiderate folks, who have places to go and drive as if they are very very late, weaving in and out, cutting people off, honking their horns, waving fingers in rude ways.

Number 2. The dentist…all of that drilling and scraping. Very unpleasant. I remember growing up…Friends that went and had there teeth cleaned often had a sore mouth and were bleeding, from the gums.

Well, a couple of weeks back, I begin to have a toothache…not terrible, but nagging….I chose to ignore it…. In fact that’s how I deal with most aches and pains….surprisingly that strategy seems to work for me…my aches and pains just seem to go away on their own…or maybe it moves to another spot…from my knee to my elbow…shoulder to back etc.

So anyway, I have two broken teeth…they have been broken for years…and never caused me even the slightest problem. I would probably still be waiting for the tooth to quit hurting…but I discovered a lump in my left breast. I remembered seeing an advertisement in the Gazette for a dentist in Utica…Martha Lewis, I called and got an appointment….she also has an office in Clinton, I went to Clinton…She is only in Utica Friday and Saturdays..

Now I haven’t been to the dentist many times in my life…I am guessing less then five times, they were uncomfortable occasions….I didn’t not the sound of the drill and it hurt….I had not been to a dentist since before 1979 and my teeth had never been cleaned.


On the drive to Clinton, I prepared myself for a lengthy lecture, shaming me, concerning me not tending to my teeth…one of the dental assistance took me back to an examining room for X-rays….she did not fuss at me…….But I still had to deal with Dr. Lewis….That is who was going to fuss.

While waiting for the Dr. Lewis to come pull my broken tooth ….I noticed three certificates, framed and hanging on the wall….you all! one certificate was concerning dealing with “The Challenging Patient”. I was thrilled! My dentist was certified to deal with wimpy, whinny persons like me!!…and if a dentist can get a certificate to deal with difficult people…there must be a lot of us! I breathed a sigh of relief!!

It gets even better….It was not my broken tooth that was giving me fits, as I understood it, the pain was, caused by a build up of plaque, under the gums, of a tooth very close to the broken tooth. So the solution to that was cleaning the plaque from there and all my teeth…Dr. Lewis didn’t even try to pressure me in to getting the broken tooth pulled….still lots of enamel covering the nerve.

I am here to tell you, dental procedures and tools have changed in the last 30 years! They are not poking, prodding and scrapping you with sharp, pointy steal tools…with names that sound like they came from Sears.

What my teeth were cleaned with was a device . …there was a fine mist of water, I think, maybe it agitated the build up off…I know it was not painful…and I was not bleeding when I got out of the chair. Now, I only have one great fear left…that is the interstate.

I was blessed with incredibly sturdy teeth…That is not just my opinion, Dr. Lewis said so. I can open just about anything but a tin can with them.

My teeth tended to, I went on and made an appointment for a mammogram…Then started, mowing, cleaning house, paying bills, tidied the shop, even washed my truck…I contend you can face anything if you are organized , have a clean house. …and with out a toothache

I had a mammogram, sent to see my oncologist, who sent me to my surgeon, who removed the lump…..I have clean bill of health!

That’s what I have been doing.

Call if you need me.